Speculative Philosophy
Alfred North Whitehead, 1929
A lecture forming the introductory chapter to his book, "Process and Reality"

SECTION
I

This course of lectures is designed as an essay in Speculative Philosophy.
Its first task must be to define 'speculative philosophy,' and to defend it
as a method productive of important knowledge.

Speculative Philosophy
is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general
ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted.
By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are
conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character
of a particular instance of the general scheme. Thus the philosophical scheme
should be coherent, logical, and, in respect to its interpretation, applicable
and adequate. Here 'applicable' means that some items of experience are thus
interpretable, and 'adequate' means that there are no items incapable of such
interpretation.

'Coherence,' as here employed,
means that the fundamental ideas, in
terms of which the scheme is developed, presuppose each other so that in isolation they are meaningless.
This requirement does not mean that they
are definable in terms of each other; it means that what is indefinable in
one such notion
cannot be abstracted from its relevance to the other
notions. It is the ideal of speculative philosophy that its fundamental notions
shall not seem capable of abstraction from each other. In other words, it is presupposed that
no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the
universe, and that
it is the business of speculative philosophy to exhibit this truth. This character
is its coherence.

The
term 'logical' has its ordinary meaning, including 'logical' consistency,
or lack of contradiction, the definition of constructs in logical terms, the
exemplification of general logical notions in specific instances, and the
principles of inference. It will be observed that logical notions must themselves
find their places in the scheme of philosophic notions.

It will also be noticed
that this ideal of speculative philosophy has its rational side and its empirical
side. The rational side is expressed by the terms 'coherent' and 'logical.'
The empirical side is expressed by the terms 'applicable' and 'adequate'.
But the two sides are bound together by clearing away an ambiguity which remains
in the previous explanation of the term 'adequate.' The adequacy of the scheme
over every item does not mean adequacy over such items as happen to have been
considered. It means
that the texture of observed experience, as illustrating the philosophic scheme,
is such that all related experience must exhibit the same texture. Thus the
philosophic scheme should be 'necessary,' in the sense of bearing in itself
its own warrant of universality throughout all experience, provided that we
confine ourselves to that which communicates with immediate matter of fact.
But what does not so communicate is unknowable, and the unknowable is unknown;
and so this universality defined by 'communication' can suffice.

This doctrine of necessity
in universality means that there is an essence
to the universe which forbids relationships beyond itself, as a violation
of its rationality. Speculative philosophy seeks that essence.

SECTION
II

Philosophers can never hope finally to formulate these metaphysical first
principles. Weakness of insight and deficiencies of language stand in the
way inexorably. Words and phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign
to their ordinary usage; and however such elements of language be stabilized
as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative
leap.

There is no first principle
which is in itself unknowable, not to be captured by a flash of insight. But,
putting aside the difficulties of language, deficiency in imaginative penetration
forbids progress in any form other than that of an asymptotic approach to
a scheme of principles, only definable in terms of the ideal which they should
satisfy.

The difficulty has its
seat in the empirical side of philosophy. Our datum is the actual world, including
ourselves; and this actual world spreads itself for observation in the guise
of the topic of our immediate experience. The elucidation of immediate experience
is the sole justification for any thought; and the starting-point for thought
is the analytic observation of components of this experience. But we are not
conscious of any clear-cut complete analysis of immediate experience, in terms
of the various details which comprise its definiteness. We habitually observe
by the method of difference. Sometimes we see an elephant, and sometimes we
do not. The result is that an elephant, when present, is noticed. Facility
of observation depends on the fact that the object observed is important when
present, and sometimes is absent.

The metaphysical first
principles can never fail of exemplification. We can never catch the actual
world taking a holiday from their sway. Thus, for the discovery of metaphysics,
the method of pinning down thought to the strict systematization of detailed
discrimination, already effected by antecedent observation, breaks down. This
collapse of the method of rigid empiricism is not confined to metaphysics.
It occurs whenever we seek the larger generalities.
In natural science this rigid method is the Baconian method of induction,
a method which, if consistently pursued, would have left science where it
found it. What Bacon omitted was the play of a free imagination, controlled
by the requirements of coherence and logic.

The true method of discovery
is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from
the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization;
and it again lands for renewed observation
rendered acute by rational interpretation. The reason for the success of this method of
imaginative rationalization is that, when the method of
difference fails, factors which are constantly present may yet be observed
under the influence
of imaginative thought. Such thought supplies the
differences which the direct observation lacks. It can even play with inconsistency;
and can thus throw light on the consistent, and persistent,
elements in experience by comparison with what in imagination is inconsistent
with them. The negative judgment is the peak of mentality. But
the conditions for the success of imaginative construction must be rigidly
adhered to.

In the first place, this
construction must have its origin in the
generalization of particular factors discerned in particular topics of human
interest; for example,
in physics, or in physiology, or in psychology, or in
aesthetics, or in ethical beliefs, or in sociology, or in languages conceived
as storehouses
of human experience. In this way the prime
requisite, that
anyhow there shall be some important application, is secured. The success
of the imaginative
experiment is always to be tested by the applicability of its results beyond
the restricted locus from which it originated. In defalut of such extended
application, a generalization started from physics,
for example, remains merely an alternative expression of notions applicable
to physics. The partially successful philosophic generalization will, if derived from physics,
find applications in fields of experience beyond
physics. It will enlighten observation in those remote fields, so that general
principles can be discerned as in process of illustration, which in the absence of the imaginative
generalization are obscured by their persistent
exemplification.

Thus the first requisite
is to proceed by the method of generalization so that certainly there is some
application; and the test of some success is application beyond
the immediate origin. In other words, some synoptic vision has been gained.

In this description of
philosophic method, the term 'philosophic generalization' has meant 'the utilization
of specific notions, applying to a restricted group of facts, for the divination
of the generic notions which apply to all facts.'

In its use of this method
natural science has shown a curious mixture of rationalism and irrationalism.
Its prevalent tone of thought has been ardently rationalistic within its own
borders, and dogmatically irrational beyond those borders. In practice such
an attitude tends to become a dogmatic denial that there are any factors in
the world not fully expressible in terms of its
own primary notions devoid of further generalization. Such a denial is the
self-denial of thought.

The second condition for
the success of imaginative construction is unflinching pursuit of the two
rationalistic ideals, coherence and logical perfection. Logical
perfection does not here require any detailed explanation. An
example of its importance is afforded by the role of mathematics in the restricted
field of natural science. The history of mathematics exhibits the generalization
of special notions observed in particular instances. In any branches of mathematics,
the notions presuppose each other. It is a remarkable characteristic of the
history of thought that branches of mathematics, developed under the pure
imaginative impulse, thus controlled, finally receive their important application.
Time may be wanted. Conic sections had to wait for eighteen hundred years.
In more recent years, the theory of probability, the theory of tensors, the
theory of matrices are cases in point.

The requirement of coherence
is the great preservative or rationalistic sanity. But the validity of its
criticism is not always admitted. If we consider philosophical controversies,
we shall find that disputants tend to require coherence from their adversaries,
and to grant dispensations to themselves. It has been remarked that a system
of philosophy is never refuted; it is only abandoned. The reason is that logical
contradictions, except as temporary slips of the mind--plentiful,
though temporary--are the most
gratuitous of errors; and usually they are trivial. Thus, after criticism,
systems do not exhibit mere illogicalities. They suffer from inadequacy and
incoherence. Failure to include some obvious elements of experience in the
scope of the system is
met by boldly denying the facts. Also while a
philosophical system retains any charm of novelty, it enjoys a plenary indulgence
for its failures in coherence. But after a system has acquired
ortbodoxv, and is taught with authority, it receives a sharper criticism.
Its denials and
its incoherences are found intolerable, and a reaction sets in.

Incoherence is the arbitrary
disconnection of first principles. In modern philosophy Descartes' two kinds
of substance, corporeal and mental, illustrate incoherence. There
is, in Descartes' philosophy, no reason why there
should not be a one-substance world, only corporeal, or a one-substance world, only mental. According
to Descartes, a substantial individual 'requires nothing but itself
in order to exist.' Thus this system makes a virtue
of its incoherence. But on the other band, the facts seem connected, while
Descartes' system
does not; for example, in the treatment of the body-mind
problem. The Cartesian system obviously says something that is
true. But its notions are too abstract to penetrate into the nature of things.

The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy lies in its modification of Descartes'
position into greater coherence. He starts with one substance, causa sui,
and considers its essential attributes and its individualized modes, i.e.,
the 'affectiones substantiae.' The gap in the system is the arbitrary
introduction of the 'modes.' And yet, a multiplicity of modes is a fixed requisite,
if the scheme is to retain any direct relevance to the many occasions in the
experienced world.

The philosophy of organism
is closely allied to Spinoza's scheme of thought. But it differs by the abandonment
of the subject-predicate forms of thought, so far as concerns the presupposition
that this form is a direct embodiment of the most ultimate characterization
of fact. The result is that the 'substance-quality' concept is avoided; and
that morphological description is replaced by description of dynamic process.
Also Spinoza's 'modes' now become the sheer actualities; so that, though analysis
of them increases our understanding, it does not lead us to the discovery
of any higher grade of reality. The coherence, which the system seeks to preserve,
is the discovery that the process, or concrescence, of any one actual entity
involves the other actual entities among its components. In this way the obvious
solidarity of the world receives its explanation.

In all philosophic theory
there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue
of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its
accidental embodiments,
and apart from these accidents is devoid of
actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed 'creativity';
and God is its
primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic pbilosophies,
Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed 'The
Absolute.' In such monistic schemes, the ultimate
is illegitimately allowed a final, 'eminent' reality, beyond that ascribed
to any of its accidents.
In this general position the philosophy of organism
seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese,
thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other
side makes fact ultimate.

SECTION
III

In its turn every philosophy will suffer a deposition. But the bundle of philosophic
systems expresses a variety of general truths about the universe, awaiting
coordination and assignment of their various spheres of validity. Such progress
in coordination is provided by the advance of philosophy; and in this sense
philosophy has advanced from Plato onwards. According to this account of the
achievement of rationalism, the chief error in philosophy is overstatement.
The aim at generalization is sound, but the estimate of success is exaggerated.
There are two main forms of such overstatement. One form is what I have termed
elsewhere the 'fallacy of misplaced
concreteness.' This fallacy consists in neglecting the degree of abstraction
involved when an
actual entity is considered merely so far as it exemplifies
certain categories of thought. There are aspects of actualities which are
simply ignored so long as we restrict thought to these categories. Thus the
success of a philosophy is to be measured by its comparative avoidance of
this fallacy, when thought is restricted within its categories.

The other
form of overstatement consists in a false estimate of logical procedure in
respect to certainty, and in respect to premises. Philosophy has been haunted
by the unfortunate notion that its method is dogmatically to indicate premises
which are severally clear, distinct, and certain; and to erect upon those
premises a deductive system of thought.

But the accurate expression
of the final generalities is the goal of discussion
and not its origin. Philosophy has been misled by the example of mathematics;
and even in mathematics the statement of the ultimate
logical principles is beset with difficulties, as yet insuperable. The verification
of a rationalistic scheme is to be sought in its general success, and not in the peculiar certainty,
or initial clarity, of its first principles. In
this connection the misuse of the ex absurdo argument has to be noted;
much philosophical
reasoning is vitiated by it. The only logical conclusion
to be drawn, when a contradiction issues from a train of reasoning, is that
at least one of
the premises involved in the inference is false. It is rashly
assumed without further question that the peccant premise can at once be located. In mathematics
this assumption is often justified, and philosophers
have been thereby misled. But in the absence of a well-defined
categoreal scheme of entities, issuing in a satisfactory metaphysical system,
every premise in
a philosophical argument is under suspicion.

Philosophy will not regain its proper status until the gradual elaboration
of categoreal schemes, definitely stated at each stage of progress, is recognized
as its proper objective. There may be rival schemes, inconsistent among themselves;
each with its own merits and its own failures. It will then be the purpose
of research to conciliate the differences. Metaphysical categories are not
dogmatic statements of the obvious; they are tentative formulations of the
ultimate generalities.

If we consider any scheme
of philosophic categories
as one complex assertion, and apply to it the logician's alternative, true
or false, the answer must be that the scheme is false. The same answer must
be given to a like question respecting the existing formulated principles
of any science.

The scheme is true with
unformulated qualifications, exceptions, limitations,
and new interpretations in terms of more general notions. We do
not yet know how to recast the scheme into a logical truth. But
the scheme is a matrix from which
true propositions applicable to particular circumstances
can be derived. We can at present only trust our trained instincts as to the discrimination
of the circumstances in respect to which the scheme is valid.

The use
of such a matrix is to argue from it boldly and with rigid logic. The scheme
should therefore be stated with the utmost precision and definiteness,
to allow of such argumentation. The conclusion of the argument should then
be confronted with circumstances to which it should apply.

The primary advantage thus gained is that experience is not interrogated with
the benumbing repression of common sense. ne observation acquires an enhanced
penetration by reason of the expectation evoked by the conclusion of the argument.
The outcome from this procedure takes one of three forms: (1) The conclusion
may agree with the observed facts; (2) The conclusion may exhibit general
agreement, with disagreement in detail; (3) The conclusion may be in complete
disagreement witbt the facts.

In the first case, the
facts are known with more adequacy and the applicability of the system to
the world has been elucidated. In the second case, criticisms of the observation
of the facts and of the details of the scheme are both required. The history
of thought shows that false interpretations of obscrved facts enter into the
records of their observation. Thus both theory, and received notions as to
fact, are in doubt. In the third case, a fundamental reorganization of theory
is required either by way of limiting it to some special province, or by way
of entire abandonment of its main categories of thought.

After the initial basis
of a rational life, with a civilized language, has been laid, all productive
thought has proceeded either by the poetic insight of artists, or by the imaginative
elaboration of schemes of thought capable of utilization as logical premises.
In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.

Rationalism never shakes
off its status of an experimental adventure. The combined influences
of mathematics and religion, which have greatly contributed to the rise of
philosophy, have also had the unfortunate effect of yoking it with static
dogmatism. Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought, progressive
and never final. But it is an adventure in which even partial success has
importance.

SECTION
IV

The field of a special science is confined to one genus of facts, in the sense
that no statements are made respecting facts which lie outside that genus.
The very circumstance that a science has naturally arisen concerning a set
of facts secures that facts of that type have definite relations among themselves
which are very obvious to all mankind. The common obviousness of things arises
when their explicit apprehension carries immediate importance for purposes
of survival, or of enjoyment--that is to say, for purposes of 'being' and
of 'well-being.' Elements in human experience, singled out in
this way, are those elements concerning which language is copious and, within
its limits, precise. The special sciences, therefore, deal with topics which
lie open to easy inspection and are readily expressed by words.

The study of philosophy
is a voyage towards the larger generalities. For this reason in the infancy
of science, when the main stress lay in the discovery of the most general
ideas usefully applicable to the subject
matter in question, philosophy was not sharply distinguished from science.
To this day, a
new science with any substantial novelty in its notions is
considered to be in some way peculiarly philosophical. In their later stages, apart from occasional
disturbances, most sciences accept without
question the general notions in terms of which they develop. The main stress is laid on the adjustment
and the direct verification of more special
statements. In such periods scientists repudiate philosopohy. Newton, justly
satisfied with
his physical principles, disclaimed metaphysics.

The fate of Newtonian physics warns us that there is a development in scientific
first principles, and that their original forms can only be saved by interpretations
of meaning and limitations of their field of application--interpretations
and limitations unsuspected during the first period of successful employment.
One chapter in the history of culture is concerned with the growth of generalities.
In such a chapter it is seen that the older generalities, like the older hills,
are worn down and diminished in height, surpassed by younger rivals.

Thus one aim of philosophy
is to challenge the half-truths constituting the scientific first
principles. The systematization of knowledge cannot be conducted in watertight-compartments.
All general truths condition each other; and the limits of their application
cannot be adequately defined apart from their correlation by yet wider generalities.
The criticism of principles must chiefly take the form of determining the
proper meanings to be assigned to the fundamental notions of the various sciences,
when these notions are considered in respect to their status relatively to
each other. The determination of this status requires a generality transcending
any special subject matter.

If we may trust the Pythagorean
tradition, the rise of European philosophy was largely promoted by the development
of mathematics into a science of abstract generality. But in its subsequent
development the method of philosophy has also been vitiated by the example
of mathematics. The primary method of mathematics is deduction; the primary
method of philosophy is descriptive generalization. Under the influence of
mathematics, deduction has been foisted onto philosophy as its standard method,
instead of taking its true place as an essential auxiliary mode of verification
whereby to test the scope of generalities. This misapprehension of philosophic
method has veiled the very considerable success of philosophy in providing
generic notions which add lucidity to our apprehension of the facts of experience.
The depositions of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas,
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz,f Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, merely mean
that ideas which these men introduced into the philosophic tradition must
be construed with limitations, adaptations, and inversions, either unknown
to them, or even explicitly repudiated by them. A new idea introduces a new
alternative; and we are not less indebted to a thinker when we adopt the alternative
which he discarded. Philosophy never reverts to its old position after the
shock of a great philosopher.

SECTION
V

Every science must devise its own instruments. The tool required for philosophy
is language. Thus philosophy redesigns language in the same way that, in a
physical science, pre-existing appliances are redesigned. It is exactly at
this point that the appeal to facts is a difficult operation. This appeal
is not solely to the expression of the facts in current verbal statements.
The adequacy of such sentences is the main question at issue. It is true that
the general agreement of mankind as to experienced facts is best expressed
in language. But the language of literature breaks down precisely at the task
of expressing in explicit form the larger generalities--the very generalities
which metaphysics seeks to express.

The point is that every
proposition refers to a universe exhibiting some general systematic metaphysical
character. Apart from this background, the separate entities whicti go to
form the proposition, and the proposition as a whole, are without determinate
character. Nothing has been defined, because every definite entity requires
a systematic universe to supply its requisite status. Thus every proposition
proposing a fact must, in its complete analysis, propose the general character
of the universe required for that fact. There are no self-sustained facts,
floating in nonentity. This doctrine, of the impossibility of tearing a proposition
from its systematic context
in the actual world, is a direct consequence of the fourth and the twentieth
of the fundamental categoreal explanations which we shall be engaged in expanding
and illustrating. A proposition can embody partial truth because it only demands
a certain type of systematic environment, which is presupposed in its meaning.
It does not refer to the universe in all its detail.

One practical aim of
metaphysics is the accurate analysis of propositions; not merely of metaphysical
propositions, but of quite ordinary propositions such as 'There is beef for
dinner today,' and 'Socrates is mortal.' The one genus of facts which constitutes
the field of some special science requires some common metaphysical presupposition
respecting the universe. It is merely credulous to accept verbal phrases as
adequate statements of propositions. The distinction between verbal phrases
and complete propositions is one of the reasons why the logicians' rigid alternative,
'true or false' is so largely irrelevant for the pursuit of knowledge.

The excessive trust in linguistic phrases has been the well-known reason vitiating
so much of the philosophy and physics among the Greeks and among the mediaeval
thinkers who continued the Greek traditions. For example John Stuart Mill
writes:

"They [the Greeks]
had great difficulty in distinguishing between things which their language
confounded, or in putting mentally together things which it distinguished
and could hardly combine the objects in nature into any classes but those
which were made for them by the popular phrases of their own country; or at
least could not help fancying those classes to be natural, and all
others arbitrary and artificial. Accordingly, scientific investigation among
the Greek schools of speculation and their followers in the Middle Ages, was
little more than a mere sifting and analysing of the notions attached to common
language. They thought that by determining the meaning of words they could
become acquainted with facts"

Mill then proceeds to
quote from Whewell
5 a paragraph illustrating
the same weakness of Greek thought.

But neither Mill, nor
Whewell, tracks this difficulty about language down to its sources. They both
presuppose that language does enunciate well-defined propositions. This is
quite untrue. Language is thoroughly indeterminate, by reason of the fact
that every occurrence presupposes some systematic type of environment.

For example, the word 'Socrates,' referring to the philosopher, in one sentence
may stand for an entity presupposing a more closely defined background than
the word 'Socrates,' with the same reference, in another sentence. The word
'mortal' affords an analogous possibility. A precise language must await a
completed metaphysical knowledge.

The technical language
of philosophy represents attempts of various schools of thought to obtain
explicit expression of general ideas presupposed by the facts of experience.
It follows that any novelty in metaphysical doctrines exhibits some measure
of disagreement with statements of the facts to be found in current philosophical
literature. The extent of disagreement measures the extent of metaphysical
divergence. It is, therefore, no valid criticism on one metaphysical school
to point out that its doctrines do not follow from the verbal expression of
the facts accepted by another school. The whole contention is that the doctrines
in question supply
a closer approach
to fully expressed propositions.

The truth itself is nothing
else than how the composite natures of the organic actualities of the world
obtain adequate representation in the divine nature. Such representations
compose the 'consequent nature' of God, which evolves in its relationship
to the evolving world without derogation
to the eternal completion of its primordial conceptual nature. In this way
the 'ontological principle' is maintained--since there can be no determiniate
truth, correlating impartially the partial experiences of many actual entities,
apart from one actual entity to which it can be referred. The reaction of
the temporal world on the nature of God is considered subsequently in Part
V: it is there termed 'the consequent nature of God.'

Whatever is found in
'practice' must lie within the scope of the metaphysical description. When
the description fails to include the 'practice,' the metaphysics is inadequate
and requires revision. There can be no appeal to practice to supplement metaphysics,
so long as we remain contented with our metaphysical doctrines. Metaphysics
is nothing but the description of the generalities which apply to all the
details of practice.

No metaphysical system
can hope entirely to satisfy these pragmatic tests. At the best such a system
will remain only an approximation to the general truths which are sought.
In particular, tbcre are no precisely stated axiomatic certainties from which
to start. There is not even the language in which to frame them. The only
possible procedure is to start from verbal expressions which, when taken by
themselves with the current meaning of their words, are ill-defined and ambiguous.
These are not premises to be immediately reasoned from apart from elucidation
by further discussion; they are endeavours to state general principles which
will be exemplified in the subsequent description of the facts of experience.
This subsequent elaboration should elucidate the meanings to be assigned to
the words and phrases employed. Such meanings are incapable of accurate apprehension
apart from a correspondingly accurate apprehension of the metaphysical background
which the universe provides for them. But no language can be anything but
elliptical, requiring a leap of the imagination to understand its meaning
and its relevance to immediate experience. The position of metaphysics in
the development of culture cannot be understood without remembering that no
verbal statement is the adequate expression of a proposition.

An old established metaphysical
system gains a false air of adequate precision from the fact that its words
and phrases have passed into current literature. Thus propositions expressed
in its language are more easily correlated to our flitting intuitions into
metaphysical truth. When we trust these verbal statements and argue as though
they adequately analysed meaning, we are led into difficulties which take
the shape of negations of what in practice is presupposed. But when they are
proposed as first principles they assume an unmerited air of sober obviousness.
Their defect is that the true propositions which they do express lose their
fundamental character when subjected to adequate expression. For example consider
the type of propositions such as 'The grass is green,' and 'the whale is big.'
This subject-predicate form of statement seems so simple, leading straight
to a metaphysical first principle; and yet in these examples it conceals such
complex, diverse meanings.

SECTION
VI

It has been an objection to speculative philosophy that it is overambitious.
Rationalism, it is admitted, is the method by which advance is made within
the lirnits of particular sciences. It is, however, held that this limited
success must not encourage attempts to rame ambitions schemes expressive of
the general nature of things.

One alleged justification
of this criticism is ill-success: European thought is represented as littered
with metaphysical systems, abandoned and unreconciled. Such
an assertion tacitly fastens upon philosophy the old dogmatic test. The same criterion would
fasten ill-success upon science. We no more
retain the physics of the seventeenth century than we do the Cartesian philosophy of that century.
Yet within limits, both systems express important
truths. Also we are beginning to understand the wider categories
which define their limits of correct application. Of course, in that century,
dogmatic views
held sway; so that the validity both of the physical notions,
and of the Cartesian notions, was misconceived. Mankind never quite knows what it is after.
When we survey the history of thought, and like
wise the history of practice, we find that one idea after another is tried
out, its limitations
defined, and its core of truth elicited. In application to the
instinct for the intellectual adventures demanded by particular epochs, there is much truth in
Augustine's rhetorical phrase, Securus judicat orbis terrarum.
At the very least, men do what they can in the way of systematization,
and in the event achieve something. The proper test is not that
of finality, but of progress.

But the main objection, dating from the sixteenth century and receiving final
expression from Francis Bacon, is the uselessness of philosophic speculation.
The position taken by this objection is that we ought to describe detailed
matter of fact, and elicit the laws with a generality strictly limited to
the systematization of these described details. General interpretation, it
is held, has no bearing upon this procedure; and thus any system of general
interpretation, be it true or false, remains intrinsically barren. Unfortunately
for this objection, there are no brute, self-contained matters of fact, capable
of being understood
apart from interpretation as an element in a system. Whenever we attempt to
express the matter of immediate experience, we find that its understanding
leads us beyond itself, to its contemporaries, to its past, to its future,
and to the universals in terms of which its definiteness is exhibited. But
such universals, by their very character of universality, embody the potentiality
of other facts with variant types of definiteness.

Thus the understanding
of the immediate brute fact requires its metaphysical interpretation as an
item in a world with some systematic relation to it. When thought comes
upon the scene, it finds the interpretations as matters of practice. Philosophy
does not initiate interpretations.
Its search for a rationalistic scheme is the search for more adequate criticism,
and for more adequate justification, of the interpretations which we perforce
employ. Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the
enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience,
we must ask a stone to record its autobiography. Every scientific memoir in
its record of the 'facts' is shot through and through with interpretation.
The methodology of rational interpretation is the product of the fitful vagueness
of consciousness. Elements which shine with immediate distinctness, in some
circumstances, retire into penumbral shadow in other circumstances, and into
black darkness on other occasions. And yet all occasions proclaim themselves
as actualities within the flux of a solid world, demanding a unity of interpretation.

Philosophy is the self-correction
by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.
Each actual occasion contributes to the circumstances of its origin additional
formative elements deepening its own peculiar individuality. Consciousness
is only the last and greatest of such elements by which the selective character
of the individual obscures the external totality from which it originates
and which it embodies. An actual individual, of such higher grade, has truck
with the totality of things by reason of its sheer actuality; but it has attained
its individual depth of being by a selective emphasis limited to its own purposes.
The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.
It replaces in rational experience what has been submerged in the higher sensitive
experience and has been sunk yet deeper by the initial operations of consciousness
itself. The selectiveness of individual experience is moral so far as it conforms
to the balance of importance disclosed in the rational vision; and conversely
the conversion of the intellectual insight into an emotional force corrects
the sensitive experience in the direction of morality. The correction is in
proportion to the rationality of the insight.

Morality of outlook is
inseparably conjoined with generality of outlook. The antithesis between the
general good and the individual interest can be abolished only when the individual
is such that its interest is the general good, thus exemplifying the loss
of the minor intensities in order to find them again with finer composition
in a wider sweep of interest.

Philosophy frees itself
from the taint of ineffectiveness by its close relations with religion and
with science, natural and sociological. It attains its chief importance by
fusing the two, namely, religion and science, into one rational scheme of
thought. Religion should connect the rational generality of philosophy with
the emotions and purposes springing out of existence in a particular society,
in a particular epoch, and conditioned by particular antecedents. Religion
is the translation of general ideas into particular thoughts, particular emotions,
and particular purposes; it is directed to the end of stretching individual
interest beyond its self-defeating particularity. Philosophy finds religion,
and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which
philosophy must weave into its own scheme.
Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity
of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual
thought alone. In the higher organisms the differences of tempo between the
mere emotions and the conceptual experiences produce a life-tedium, unless
this supreme fusion has been effected. The two sides of the organism require
a reconciliation in which emotional experiences illustrate a conceptual justification,
and conceptual experiences find an emotional illustration.

This demand for an intellectual
justification of brute experience has also been the motive power in the advance
of European science. In this sense scientific interest is only a variant form
of religious interest. Any survcy of the scientific devotion to 'truth,' as
an ideal, will confirm this statement.

There is, however, a grave
divergence between science and religion in respect to the phases of individual
experience with which they are concerned. Religion is centered upon the harmony
of rational thought with the sensitive reaction to the percepta from which
experience originates. Science is concerned with the harmony of rational thought
with the percepta themselves. When science deals with emotions, the emotions
in question are percepta and not immediate passions-otber people's emotion
and not our own; at least our own in recollection, and not in immediacy. Religion
deals with the forination of the experiencing subject; whereas science deals
with the objects, which are the data forming the primary phase in this experience.
The subject originates
from, and amid, given conditions; science conciliates thought with this primary
matter of fact; and religion conciliates the thought involved in the process
with the sensitive reaction involved in that same process. The process is
nothing else than the experiencing subject itself. In this explanation it
is presumed that an experiencing subject is one occasion of sensitive reaction
to an actual world. Science finds religious experiences among its percepta;
and religion finds scientific concepts among the conceptual experiences to
be fused with particular sensitive reactions.

The conclusion of this
discussion is, first, the assertion of the old doctrine
that breadth of thought reacting with intensity of sensitive experience stands
out as an ultimate claim of existence; secondly, the assertion that empirically
the development of self-justifying thoughts
has been achieved
by the complex process of generalizing from particular topics, of imaginatively
schematizing the generalizations, and finally by renewed comparison
of the imagined scheme with the direct experience to which it
should apply.

There is no justification for checking generalization at any particular stage.
Each phase of generalization exhibits its own peculiar simplicities which
stand out just at that stage, and at no other stage. There are simplicities
connected with the motion of a bar of steel which are obscured if we refuse
to abstract from the individual molecules; and there are certain simplicities
concerning the behaviour of men which are obscured if we refuse to abstract
from the individual peculiarities of particular specimens. In the same way,
there are certain general truths, about the actual things in the common world
of activity, which will be obscured when attention is confined to some particular
detailed mode of considering them. These general truths, involved in the meaning
of every particular notion respecting the actions of things, are the subject-matter
for speculative philosophy.

Philosophy destroys its
usefulness when it indulges in brilliant feats of
explaining away. It is then trespassing with the wrong equipment upon the field of particular
sciences. Its ultimate appeal is to the general consciousness
of what in practice we experience. Whatever thread of presupposition
characterizes social expression throughout the various epochs of
rational societyt must find its place in philosophic theory. Speculative boldness
must be balanced by complete humility before logic, and before fact. It is
a disease of philosophy when it is neither bold nor humble, but merely a reflection
of the temperamental presuppositions of exceptional personalities.

Analogously, we do not
trust any recasting of scientific theory depending upon a single performance
of an aberrant experiment, unrepeated. The ultimate test is always widespread,
recurrent experience; and the more general the rationalistic scheme, the more
important is this final appeal.

The useful function of
philosophy is to promote the most general
systematization of civilized thought. There is a constant reaction between
specialism and
common sense. It is the part of the special sciences to
modify common sense. Philosophy is the welding of imagination and common
sense into a restraint upon specialists, and also into an enlargement of their imaginations.
By providing the generic notions philosophy should make it easier to conceive
the infinite variety of specific instances which rest unrealized in the womb
of nature.